A category of "kids in danger"

Last Sunday was the Mylapore Thruvizha Kolam contest on North Mada Street. While waiting for the organizers to get things started I heard a baby’s loud wailing. Behind a park car a huge woman was scolding a little baby and poking her with a piece a wood in her hand. I walked up and made casual talk.. asked her why the child was crying. The big lady replied that the child was refusing to eat her food and the lady was mad that the child was turning her face away from the food. I found out that the child was 1 ½ years old and cringed inwards at the unreasonable expectation. I casually told her that even my 2 yr old fussed about food and did not eat easily. She wasn’t very pleased with my presence and I slowly walked off.

5 mts later I hear the child screaming and crying again. I walked up behind the car and found the kid lying down and this big lady whacking her on the hand with the wood piece. The whacks were so hard I could hear the ‘thap thap’ noises.

My blood boiled – I screamed at her to stop her mad behaviour. There was a posse of traffic policeman 5 feet away for the festival. They came running hearing my screaming and shooed the lady away. As if that solves this problem !!!!

I called Chld Helpline 1098, gave them the location where the child was and waited for their counselors to arrive.

Meanwhile a few policemen arrived there to monitor the festival crowd. I walked up to an officer and asked him if he could counsel the lady on violent abuse of the child and its consequences under the Domestic violence Act. He then informed me that the lady had a history of violent behaviour – infact it had led to her two sons going wonky – one went mad and ran away and the other committed suicide. He said he would give her a warning.

Meanwhile, half an hour and childline counselors did not come.

While the big lady had moved a little farther away from the scene, the baby and its mother were closeby. I walked up to the mother – a frail, dirty looking woman. I found her a very sensible person to talk to. She said she had borrowed Rs. 500 from the big lady ( who is a local flower seller) and hence could not say anything when she does anything to her children (she had another 3 yr old). I counseled her that kids who grow up being abused or seeing violence could go astray and would lose their own self-respect. The local fruit sellers and small shop owners were all supportive of her and said that they would pitch in and keep a watch on the children.

I asked the mother if she wanted her kids to go to a Home for care and education. She said she would keep them with her. I asked her if she had been sterilized. She said that the doctors at Gosha hospital (free for the poor) had refused to sterilize her saying her body was weak.

This is just a narration of a Sunday afternoorn I spent.

However there are two issues that worry me:
If a lady wants to be sterilized, does she have to be of strong constitution ? I need to know the medical position on this, because I have heard this comment from a lot of poor women. My house help’s mother had 6 children – even she says that the doctors did not sterilize her saying she had a weak constitution. Too weak to sterilize but strong enough to bear 6 kids !!

If this is not a correct medical position, then there is a systemic issue to correct here. Sterilization should not be denied to women who seek it on flippant grounds.

Secondly, there is a category of kids who are marginalized, they have parents but in circumstances that require them to be on the roads – they are easy prey to child abuse, physical and sexual, drugs, bad company, trafficking, unsafe roads.

I put these kids in the category “Kids in Danger”. They need a far more organized level of supervision than what our system has now.

We need to work towards a community participation in the upbringing of its marginalized kids. Child Watch Volunteers need to keep a watchful eye on these kids. These Volunteers could be the local housewives or the local shopkeepers or the area policemen or temple priests, etc. They need to be trained on the steps to be taken in the event of seeing abusive behaviour. A process of mainstreaming these kids is required.

We need to work on this on an urgent basis.